@jensimmons currently experimenting with Chrome MCP server and this is interesting. This enable debug/dev workflows that are new and more effective than manual debug

@jensimmons My employer is pushing pretty hard for us to use it. Despite my misgivings - mostly ethical - I decided to make an honest attempt.

Started well, ended up taking me much more time to fix things in the end. And that was that.

Unfortunately the ethical and environmental concerns get hand waved, so I tend to talk about actual results.

The short version: If I have a saw than randomly just cuts something entirely wrong, I don't figure out how to work around it. I throw the saw away. Unreliable tools are useless.

@jensimmons finally I think being able to avoid the use of AI and GenAi specifically, will end up being used as a status signifier, to show that you are more authentic, above the grubby commercial constraints that affect your more compromised and lower status peers, and have enough positional power to reject external pressure to use it.

A bit like people who make handmade, high-end, expensive goods, instead of having to work in factories that focus on volume output.

@jensimmons I see it as a perceived threat to many web developers who have enjoyed the status and high wages their profession has previously offered, particularly relative to other professions that require more formal training & are more tightly regulated.

I research the environmental impact of AI, and write about it at work & on my personal blog. There’s a lot more there. I expect it to eventually become the norm for commercial work. Particularly with Claude/OpenCode adoption

@jensimmons interesting as a subject of philosphical enquiry. Tiring as its current iteration is intertwined with late stage capitalism and ethics constantly waved away, politely or consciously.

Not using it much. Sometimes find it helpful to find stuff, or a word or phrase via natural language description. It's ok.

I expect people will use it (and they are), and that it, in most hands, will lead to more bloat and to less trustworthy and less accessible sites/apps.

@jensimmons I'd wish it would go away, for several reasons. But it won't.

I don't think hate and refusal is a useful reaction to it, though. We got a tool based on VS Code and Claude which turns out to be actually helpful and creates reasonable code. I use it sometimes for boring stuff and then I check the code. It also helped me when I was stuck with an issue once (which was a bit humiliating).

I think it will have a devastating effect on developers who start now. Still, the effects on our jobs are less horrible than LLMs producing crap texts, fake images and disinformation.

@jensimmons https://typo.social/@db/116056507371498997

@jensimmons It gives me the ick.

@jensimmons There are plenty of good reasons not to incorporate LLM code gen into one's workflow, but one I haven't seen mentioned here is that I fear that relying on such tools will, over time, make me a worse developer.

Like, I crochet as a hobby. If I used a magic machine that did most of the crocheting for me, my skills would plateau and inevitably atrophy.

Programming is a craft like any other, requiring deep, consistent practice to get good and stay good. LLMs hinder that practice (imo).

@jensimmons Not a fan of the plagiarism machine, no. I can only imagine it’s already stolen things I’ve made before.

A lot of experienced developers I know are tempted to just quit the industry. They’re sick of organisations trying to force genAI tools on them, in turn devaluing their work and taking away the joy derived from making things and solving problems yourself.

I’ve used it for non-dev tasks before, mainly collating things or transforming data formats, but every bit of code I’ve gotten out of an LLM has been buggy or broken in some form, even really basic shit. I don’t trust it to write code at all.

@jensimmons Even though I’m not using LLMs at all, the constant onslaught of news and tech bro boosters has beaten me into a state, where I’m loosing interest in web development altogether.

Right now I’m hoping that I can just survive a little bit longer than the AI hype bubble. But the fun is already not there anymore. Doing my job feels like slowly getting sucked down a quicksand hole.

@jensimmons can’t wait for the bubble to pop and for us to — potentially — salvage the really valuable stuff after. Lots of hype, little evidence.

I’m generally disappointed with contemporary web dev. There is a lot of JS slop all ready — slow, bloated, brittle — and I only see LLM accelerating that.

The next few years are gonna be rough.

@jensimmons I hate it, it's garbage, and when possible, I intend to avoid using applications that are written with it.

God I cannot wait for this damn bubble to pop already.

@jensimmons

I’m currently using Gemini 3 Pro in Google Antigravity for WordPress theme development. It’s incredible.

@jensimmons Feeling disrespect towards the people building it, and sadness towards the people using it.

@jensimmons you’re the last major browser without LLM crap crammed into it. Make it a marketing argument. There is no ethical use of GenAI.

@jensimmons I expect LLMs will get better and the cost lower, which means simple webapp will become disposable. You don't need to plan or project an app for a department, they can just have one made and then throw it away when they are done, or generate a new one when the specs change. LLMs are much better at small projects (and always will, because of the cost of context) so it's cheaper to generate many disposable apps than maintain one large complex one.

@jensimmons I do not use LLMs on principle, and my work as a software developer and creator continues to hum along just fine.

I also consider slopcoding to be incompatible with free/libre software, so I am very concerned both by (a) increasing slop additions to ostensibly FLOSS codebases, and (b) impending ecosystem collapse due to open software's endless scraping & license stripping by LLM vendors.

@jensimmons I’m using LLMs for some things more regularly. It helps with incrementally documenting my work. I'm sometimes surprised how well it does. But it still requires a lot of checking and redaction. So, not a win for productivity.
Also, they are still awful at working on existing CSS code bases. Not sure what's going on there.

@jensimmons I find great use when asking these tools to “do” things and not to “know” things.

Transform a bunch of HTML that would require me to do it by hand, rework a specific conditional to work a different way, etc.

Any task that requires access to prior knowledge is hit or miss at best for me but honest to goodness “grunt work” saves me a TON of time in the aggregate.

@jensimmons I‘ve been avoiding it because I didn’t like how much energy it needs and how dangerous it can be for society.

But I also need to think of myself and how my coworkers are doing their work much faster now. I will not be able to compete anymore without AI. So I gave up and started using it. It does help already but there is still much to learn. The ecosystem is already so advanced that it’s hard to get into it now.

We need to solve the fundamental problems on the way.

@jensimmons Feels terrible, and all of my colleagues who admit to using them are doing worse and worse work while feeling like they’re on top of the world

@jensimmons i must say, I don’t think you can use the results of this poll for anything other than conclude that Mastoson users really really hate AI. But not at all representative of the general sentiment.

I am using it a lot these days. Was a skeptic for long. It’s Undeniably useful if you learn to use the tools properly instead of being dismissive and thinking that copy past to ChatGPT is still the name of the game in 2026

@jensimmons I've seen what only consuming did to my mother, so I much prefer creating by the means of my own intelligence. Also, I enjoy it; hand coding. Slow cooking.

That said, LLM's can help me identify accessibility issues I otherwise wouldn't notice, so as a skilled "linter" it does have its place.

I don't expect many to bear the costs of handmade websites much longer, and as I'm too old to delegate the craft to AI, I'm considering a shift in career.

Thanks for all the inspiration, btw.

@jensimmons Produces awful results; so straight away I can discount it on that alone. Not considering all the other issues.

It’s trained on the web. Most of the web is awful code. No surprises it can only generate bloated inaccessible garbage.

@jensimmons it’s the thing that makes me glad I retired in 2024

@jensimmons I expect it to not be used.

@jensimmons Avoid at all cost.

@jensimmons not gonna touch that shit with a ten foot pole.

@jensimmons id rather stand on a plug than use ai in my workflow.

@jensimmons

i hate it

https://ai-sucks-actually.fyi/